Schools are almost out – and when they are droves of people will driving off on holidays and days out.

The summer is predictably one of the busiest times of year on the roads and so to help drivers plan their journeys the Highways Agency is providing information on potential hotspots and the peak times when they should be avoided if possible.

Analysing data from previous years, the agency has produced a list of 23 popular holiday routes which are expected to be the most used again this summer.

The M20 towards the Kent ports and the two stretches of the M25 are all among the agency’s 12 busiest routes. For each of these, traffic patterns from each of the last three years have been used to identify times when traffic is at its peak during two crucial periods at the start of the school summer holidays and the August bank holiday weekend.